[ipxe-devel] Non-embedded IP Configuration

[Matthew Walster]

I have a scenario where iPXE would be perfect for loading / upgrading the
operating system on remotely deployed hardware, but I've come across a
hurdle regarding the lack of DHCP at the remote site, and I was wondering
if anyone else has solved this in an interesting way?

You can embed a boot script into the iPXE binary which contains static
networking information, but I don't want to have to compile a huge number
of binaries -- I'd like to just have one and it references something
specific on that machine.

For instance, maybe it's stored in an EFI system partition, or read from a
small USB attached storage (FAT formatted like UEFI maybe) or a config
register somewhere, so that next time the system boots, it can reference
that variable and use those settings within a boot script. Perhaps it is
asking too much, but being able to load a client certificate from such a
device (or, heaven forbid, TPM authentication support) would reduce the
need to replace the ipxe binary from a central source and risk corruption
during install.

It would be great if it was possible to even write to that location as well
from iPXE, so that if booting failed to get an IP connection, it could
offer a user a prompt to configure new interface configuration which would
then be saved. The booted Operating System could also make changes to that
location if the IP configuration is changed for the next boot. I realise
that's a big ask.

Has anyone come across that before, or are the options pretty much DHCP or
static embedded?

Cheers,

M
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ipxe.org/pipermail/ipxe-devel/attachments/20190202/84c966cd/attachment.htm>